First meet

Today Lily had her first official swim meet. This meant she would officially have times! A big deal for her. She had to be at the pool at 10am. I was working so hubby took both the girls and when I left work at 10, I headed straight there. As I was on my way one of the other mums texted me to say, don't rush they are running 2 hours behind schedule. OMW, really, 2 hours? Urghhh.

I was thrilled in some ways as this meant I had not missed a minute and when I got there she was about to get into the water for warm ups.

Dear god I thought I was going to go mad from boredom. Rosie actually fell asleep for an hour. She finally had her first race at 3pm. They weren't even allowed to eat as they didn't want the kids to throw up or get cramps in the pool. Her and her friend finally snuck away for a minute and shared a sandwich and a piece of cheese but someone caught them and snitched. I felt so sorry for them they hadn't eaten since 8am and it was 3 and they were starving and expected to race? They are little kids for heavens sake. And for the record neither Paula nor Lily pewked or got a cramp.

Lilys team finally got called and I watched as she nervously paced behind the plate. Then it was time for her to assume her position and then the siren blared and she was off. We had to laugh as she lost so much time cos she kept looking to see if anyone was around her. Every other stroke she would almost stop as she assessed her position.

This is her first ever competition and we told her not to expect to win or to even place for that matter but all that mattered was getting her official times and surprisingly, she was fine with that.

(We had another commitment this evening. One that I initially turned down due to the meet but once we were assured that we would be finished at the meet by 3 we decided to commit ourselves to that also. When we left the house this morning everybody had everything they would need for the whole day, just in case we weren't able to get home in between the 2 things. That was good thinking on my part. But it was a heck of alot of stuff to schlep.)

As we were now running 3 hours behind schedule I told Lily we were not going to be able to go to the parade. She got so upset and panicky. In the end with the help of her coach she decided to hang on for the last possible second and then if she hadn't raced her final freestyle race she would forfeit. She did in fact forfeit her final race, her choice. This tells me that she isn't as "into" swimming as she could be. If this was a horse competition she would never have missed it, ever. Don't get me wrong, she likes swimming but she isn't passionate about it.

Lily and Paula before the competition

warm up
Ready to fly
scoreboard
Neck and neck but she stopped to look and see if she was winning and lost her place. Silly goose.


Lily did really well in spite of herself and her constant checking on the competition.
Her times are:
100m Fly: 57.65
100m Back 56.53
100m breast 1.04.48

She beat her times from her friendly meet a couple of weeks ago. She knocked 13 seconds off of her fly.
We are proud of her and also think she is a funny girl. When I told her that she lost so much time by checking on her placement she said, "Mum, I can't help it I need to know where I am. I can't stop it, I tried" I'm sure with time she will stop.

She loved it but said it was dull waiting so long in between races....uh yeah, tell me about it.

More tomorrow on the parade.